All over the world each day, tiny feet move playfully over schoolhouse floors. Behind the bright laughing girlish faces lives an eager spirit ready to learn the wonders to come. Few know or understand the cruel avoidable horrors that are ahead. Their male counterparts will bring dreadfully short the future of any education. Today in Nigeria, the common simplicities of the rights of respect, love and above all an education are denied its girls. Like a huge grotesque mirror, this meme reflects across the globe. The oppressors know how wisdom grows. The act of learning becomes a socio-economic leveler. It frees the mind to drive the brain to perform feats yet unknowable. In pockets of the world male dominated Islamist slaughter, set afire, maim and enslave girls that dare to learn.
“If you strike your hand on his chest, you know where a person’s life is,”~ Ilu Igbo.
What better way for the Boko Haram to create deep unspeakable fear in the hearts of Nigerians. They steal young women and girls thereby becoming the destroyers of Nigeria’s future.
Our heads of state too frequently explain away the lack of urgency in their responses to the daily outcries to stop the horror. Yet their explanations resonate as weak and apathetic in light of a growing acknowledgement. The global populace is becoming aware that terrorists are using young girls as tools of war. The rights of sovereign politics and religion hold sway over the rights of poor women. The sanctification of female sexual enslavement and cruelty has become an integral part of the underlying economic structures of most countries. This underpins the global monetary system.
The invisible hands of financiers who support various fanatical regimes are plentiful. Many are transnational governments with interrelated economies. Simply put terrorism and female slavery are big business. With huge buying power, they purchase and sell leadership that ignores the atrocities. Every country has a share in that pie of the extreme economics of female ostracizing. Nigeria is rapidly becoming an important hub for trafficking of kidnapped girls. Its expression of extreme Islam is the Boko Haram.
They preach a revised dogma of the Qur’an to draw rich donors from countries that embrace the doctrine. Yet many donors are unaware that those funds are finding its way to extremists’ leadership. Still more often simple crimes of kidnapping and bank robbery also swell the wealth of terrorists and their followers. Because of the global crackdown on money laundering, organizations like the Boko Haram have found very creative ways to house their finances.
Terrorist cells have grown in number. Therefore, many participate in hawala a form of trust banking. It is very hard to estimate the true monetary value of terrorist groups like the Boko Haram. Cash couriers move money or operate along margins of the traditional financial systems. The monetary cost to inflict terror is great. An estimated 60 trillion dollars in extremists’ organization money has weaved in and out of transnational traditional or shadow banking institutions. The payout to the donor comes too often in the form of trading of human flesh. Selling human sex slaves is a $32 billion a year business. That averages about $90 per head.
The young girls taken from their school in Nigeria under the cloak of night were in all likelihood for selling. In essence, extreme Islamists have control of a large economic base that spans the globe. It influences governments and corrupts leaders. Unfortunately, bias cannot be legislated. Nevertheless, well-enforced laws can mitigate its outcomes.
“If you strike your hand on his chest, you know where a person’s life is,” ~ Ilu Igbo.
